The LGBTQ community is “certainly in a state of crisis, particularly among youth,” Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y., the first openly gay Afro Latino in Congress, told NBC News in an email. “Asking for help is a sign of strength, but we need to make sure that we have the proper resources in place for those who need help.”
The study’s lead author, Kristen Choi, an adolescent psychiatric nurse and health services researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles, said the number of mental health facilities in the U.S. that are trained to serve LGBTQ youth has barely budged over a six-year period, increasing from 25% of all facilities in 2014 to just 28% in 2020.
Mental health resources, she said, are crucial for LGBTQ youth. They face much higher rates of poor mental health when compared with their heterosexual peers, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“It was disappointing to see,” Choi said of the findings, which analyzed data from the Department of Health and Human Services’ National Mental Health Services Survey. Many providers and organizations, she said, are not necessarily trained or equipped to interact with LGBTQ kids in a way that is sensitive, affirmative and appropriate.
Jonah DeChants, a research scientist at The Trevor Project, an advocacy group for LGBTQ youth, said being an LGBTQ person can be “very, very stressful”. Improving access to LGBTQ care can be a challenge, DeChants said, because it takes a specific form of training. “And we certainly want folks moving into that space to certainly be qualified,” he said.
Read more at NBCNews.com.
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